Red Hat Updates JBoss Enterprise Portal 5.1

Enterprise Linux and open source middleware vendor Red Hat is updating its JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform with a new 5.1 release. The new release follows the 5.0 release which came out in June of this year, and provides new enhancements to help enterprises with workflow and content management.

The new Site Publisher add-on technology was included as a technical preview in the 5.0 portal release and with 5.1 is now a fully supported technology. With the new capabilities, Red Hat is aiming to further improve portal usability for enterprise users.
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"What we do at Red Hat is we take that (eXo project) and bring it in-house and put it through our productization process," Jason Andersen, senior product manager enterprise portal platform at Red Hat told InternetNews.com. "We make sure everything works, get the performance in line, get the documentation work done and then we bring it to market as a Red Hat product."

Andersen explained that Site Publisher is all about the idea of authoring content. He noted that with the Enterprise Portal Platform, users previously could have taken content and wrapped it up into a portlet. In contrast, Site Publisher provides a business user author interface that easily enables users to author content and then upload it to the portal.

"What it also gives us the ability to do is to have a lot of richness around how content is presented on the page," Andersen said.

Anderson noted that new page templates in Site Publisher, make it easier for enterprise users to understand and format content. Additionally Anderson said that in Enterprise Portal Platform 5.1, Red Hat has provided enhanced enterprise features for Site Publisher over what had been in the 5.0 release.

"There is a much better set of capabilities around internationalization and handling translated content," Andersen said.

The 5.1 release also includes a new technical preview of a content staging feature. Andersen noted that a challenge with embedded web content management systems is that users are often working on a piece of content that is live on the production server. The content staging feature enables a new workflow process that can isolate content for approval before it goes live.

Another key area for enteprise technology users today is with mobile access. Anderson said that Red Hat has partnerships in place for the mobile enablement of Enterprise Portal Platform. Just don't expect an iPhone or Android app from Red Hat directly though.

"We're not specifically building those applications, it's more of a partnership and certification thing," Andersen said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news
service of the IT Business Edge Network, the
network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.